Sluiceville

place. Withered town relying on rock-hound tourism to keep afloat. The kindness of strangers pays the wages at the Food and Fuel Emporium as well as Hiram's Hostelry and the trickle-down effect stops the leakage of young adults to the sleaze of the bigger towns in the Greater Gravelbend Region. Rock collectors and iron pyrite enthusiasts congregate at the sluiceworks where steam-driven donkey-pumps have been keeping the tailings dry since 1846 when the gold ran out. A new high fence is being hastily constructed upstream from town. Cheese making and quilt pressing are now the main cottage-industries along with whittlin' likenesses of Grover Cleveland, who was born just up the river. A gravel-slide that destroyed the saltine factory is surmounted by a cairn constructed of imported pebbles brought to the site by pilgrims after a local trapper had a dream in which he was commanded to build an edifice of stones to commemorate the disaster. Aleuts have recently built a new seasonal encampment upstream from town. ..............................